CHAPTER 13 |

Debts & Knights in Shining Armor

 

 

Our anger was dissipating with the telling of his story. I could feel the space it was creating, and it was making room for something else. Something that forced me to drop my gaze to his fitted t-shirt and the defined muscles underneath.

“It’s workin’, isn’t it?”

“What is?” I asked, my voice hoarse with emerging lust and affection.

“The plan.”

My eyes closed, blocking out the gun show, and I shook my head. So tired. “God, Patrick, I don’t know.”  

“You’re not foolin’ me, Kins. I know too much.”  

I opened my eyes, looking up to find him closing in on me, his face only a shred of air away from mine. “Patrick …”

“Yeah?”

He watched my mouth, watched the parting of my lips. He took a chance, leaned down, and lightly brushed his lips against mine. An inward gasp shook my body at his touch, my lips aching for more as he backed away. Traitors.

“You didn’t push me away,” he noted observantly, nodding with a satisfactory look on his face.

I hadn’t, but I wasn’t fully succumbing. Not yet.

“We can’t just pick up where we left off, you know.”

“Why not?” he asked, lifting his eyes back to mine.

“Uh, because things are different?” My eyebrows lifted, incredulous.

“Is this because of Meghan? Because—”

“Well, I mean, kind of, but—”

“—I’ve already talked to her about the possibility of me dating, and she’s fine. It’ll be an adjustment, but—”

He had been so prepared, so hopeful, and I sighed. “It’s not that.”

“Then tell me what it is. We can fix it.”

We. My heart squeezed with hope, while my lips sputtered around words still needing to be said. “Because you let me go! You let me just … break up with you without even trying.” I rubbed my hands over my eyes. So tired. “You didn’t fight for me. If you wanted me so badly, why didn’t you fight for me?”

“Okay, Kinsey. Tell me, what was I supposed to do?”

His hand moved from beside my head to comb through my hair, awakening my roots and sending shivers down to my toes. That heat coiled in my belly, sending waves of warmth through my extremities and between my thighs. The power his touch had over me, the feelings he was able to pull forth. It was intense, it was unnerving.

But it was him.

Patrickinney.

“You were supposed to fight for us! You were supposed to chase after me like some … I don’t know!”

“Like some knight in shining armor?” he offered with a smirk. His eyes glinted with laughter.

“Yes!”

“I was too young to be a feckin’ hero, Kinsey, and in case you haven’t noticed, life isn’t a goddamn movie.”

“But you loved me.”

“Yes, and I still do.”

He emphasized every word, forcing the point with a hard stare. I shook my head, blinking back tears. No, I refused to cry, so instead, I shoved against his chest, and he didn’t budge.

“If you loved me, you—”

“Let me tell you something, okay, before your stupid mouth says something else you’re gonna regret. When you broke up with me, I was angry. And do you know why?”

“Uh, because I broke up with you?”

He snickered, curling his lips into a half-smile. One dimple. “Well, yeah, but I could put myself in your shoes. I may not have gone away, I might not have wanted to break up with you, but I could understand how your taste of freedom could make ya wanna see what else was out there. We were young, we had only ever been with each other …”

He shrugged, and continued, “Nah, I had gotten that, Kins. But what pissed me off was, you didn’t cry. I mean, I had seen ya cry over droppin’ a feckin’ hot dog. But when you broke up with me? Nothing. You were like …” He shook his head, pressing one hand against my cheek while the other raked his fingers through my hair. “You were like a robot. Like ya didn’t care—like ya didn’t care about me. About me, Kinsey! I wasn’t some feckin’ guy you hooked up with at a frat party. It was me! Do you know how pissed off I was that we had gone through everything together, yet I had to face being crushed alone?”

Pain fractured his voice, and he cleared his throat, squaring his jaw and pulling himself together. “Like I said, I was too angry to fight, and then, I messed up. After that, well, I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror, let alone fight for someone I no longer felt I deserved.”

My lower lip clamped between my teeth, tipping my chin toward my chest. I had to look away from him, from the old pain heating his eyes. The pain I had caused. I whispered my apology under my breath, feeling that he finally deserved that after all those years. He grabbed my chin and maneuvered my head to look in his eyes. His hands held me, and I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to.

“There’s nothing to apologize for.”

I touched my hand to his face. My eyes welled up, and my fingers dug into his cheek. “But ten years, Patrick. We didn’t talk to each other for ten years.”

“It was a really long time,” he agreed, nodding.

“You could have called, or—”

“I was married, and you were still fightin’ yourself and runnin’ away from the shite neither of us could face. I didn’t know if you’d want to hear from me, or if I should—” He stopped himself, and his brow furrowed. “You know what? I don’t need to make excuses for it, because sometimes things just take time, Kinsey. Sometimes you need ten years to realize that nothing is getting’ better and nothing is hurtin’ less, and nothing is gettin’ that feckin’ woman out of your head.”

A tear dropped from my eye. “So, you really left her, because of me.”

Patrick nodded, his fingers playing along the edge of my ear. “Christine Kinney never sounded as good. Never sounded right.”

I rolled my eyes, dropping my hand from his cheek to his arm. “I am not marrying you.” I said it, but it lacked the extra oomph I had registered over the past two years. I just didn’t have it in me anymore—the fight.

His hand fell from my face to take mine. “You always did look good with a ring on your finger.” His thumb ran over my ring finger, his eyes never leaving mine.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” I groaned, as I attempted to pull my hand away, that little smile playing on my lips. I wondered what ever happened to my gaudy green ring. The things we lose, even the things that mean so much.

He held my hand tight, stroking along the hills of my knuckles. “Can I ask you a question?”

I nodded. “Yeah, sure.”

“Why haven’t you been with anyone else, Kins?”

The question left me unhinged, opening and closing my mouth while words struggled to form. I shook my head, looking away.

“I don’t think so,” he said, grabbing my chin. “I’ve told you everything. You owe me that too.”

Patrickinney was a relentless glob of peanut butter, hanging on for dear sweet life to the furthest corners of my mouth. He was impossible to get rid of, and even if I could, his flavor would linger there forever, making me crave him until that next taste.

I would never stop craving him.

“Because I can’t!” I shouted, and he lifted his head with the beginnings of a smile tugging at his lips.

“Why?” he asked, and I struggled on my answer, the words I couldn’t yet say. It was infuriating; breaking through that thick, ten-year-old wall with nothing but my weak little fists. But Patrick did the heavy work, always had—setting things up, making things happen. “Because you chose me?”

“Yeah, I did then, but now? Hmmm … I don’t think so, Kinney,” I teased, pulling from his reach and scooting away to drop back on the couch.

“Oh, no?” He stalked after me, hunting me with those eyes. A Celtic tiger after his prey.

My heart thrust into my chest—boom, boom, boom—and I thought, maybe I couldn’t handle this. Maybe I should repair my walls, put up my defenses again. Maybe this was a wrong move, deciding to stay there with him and giving him his one precious night.

But then his fingers were against my ribs. “Oh, God,” I gasped, unable to contain my obnoxious laughter as I cackled through the tiny hole of a living room. First shouting and now laughter in the matter of minutes. I wondered what the church lady was thinking, if she could hear it all happening above her garage. If she was calling Mayor Connie Fischer, giving her the play-by-play of the inevitable reunion of River Canyon’s greatest love story.

I toppled over, unapologetically kicking the rest of my drink over the coffee table and onto the carpeted floor. I heard it drip into the woven fabric with paused plops as Patrick clambered over me to continue his assault. I knew what he was doing. I knew what he was recreating, what he was trying to pull forth from my memory, and I didn’t care. Because in that moment, I wanted him to. I wanted to feel the weight of completion sitting over me, and so, I didn’t stop him.

Then, just like that, his fingers stopped moving, resting dangerously close to my underwire, and I imagined if he just slid his hand up a couple inches … Cupping, stroking … Would I have stopped him? Pushed him away? Scrambled out from underneath him? 

No.

Patrick’s face hovered over mine. He had changed over the years since I had met him, and, God, what a ridiculous thought—three to thirty-two was quite the leap. There were fine wrinkles where there had once been smooth skin, bone structure where there had once been pudge, and hair where there was once nothing but baby softness. But, underneath all that fuzz and those lines, was Patrick and his eyes. Those eyes hadn’t changed, and they were always home. Calling to me, inviting me in …

“Hey,” he said.

“Hi.”

“Can I tell you something?”

I nodded, focusing on his eyes to keep myself from fixating on the thighs that straddled my waist and the erection that pressed into my pubic bone.

“I’ve missed you. A lot.”

There was no more fight, and my walls fell a little further. “I’ve missed you too.”

If he had hesitated for another second, I would have begged him to kiss me. I would have tossed away the rest of everything I had been holding onto, and pleaded with him to just do it already. But that Patrick Kinney …

He didn’t so much as falter; he just did.

He took my mouth and claimed it as his own, and I agreed with the immediate parting of my lips. His tongue tested the waters, running along the inside of my upper lip, and when he decided my teeth weren’t going to sever any veins, he delved a little deeper, reacquainting his tongue with mine. Slowly, softly, savoring every touch and taste. Old long-lost friends, familiar in a strange way, and I moaned into his mouth.

If I had told my twenty-year-old heartbroken self that I would, twelve years later, be kissing Patrick Kinney on the giant leather sectional in his shoebox apartment, I wouldn’t have believed it. I would have snorted with bitterness toward him, toward myself for throwing him away. But, there I was, gripping tufts of his soft blonde hair in my hands while his fingers inched their way up the front of my shirt, skittering over the smooth flesh of my stomach, and over my breasts, and there was nowhere else I wanted to be.

His mouth moved beyond mine to my neck, where he breathed in the scent of my hair, kissing my skin with open lips, and he groaned. I responded with an arch of my back against him, into his exploring hands.

“Patrick,” I gasped, his hand sliding under my bra, a thumb grazing over a rock-hard nipple.

His lips smiled against my neck, his stubbled chin tickling the hollow of my collarbone. “You have no idea how good it feels to hear you say my name again.”

“I say your name all the time,” I said, followed by a breathy giggle as his lips feathered kisses along my throat to just behind my ear.

“Not like that, ya don’t.”

The tightness in my chest didn’t come from my lungs, but from my heart, and I smiled as he moved his mouth back down from my ear to the base of my neck, retracing his steps with lips and tongue. He stopped to capture my mouth again, sucking my lower lip between his before lightly pressing his lips against the swollen flesh. He moved further down to that dip at the base of my throat, and brushed his lips lightly over my chest. Just above the valley between my breasts, and he inhaled the scent of my skin.

“God, I am so hungry,” he said in a gruff voice.

I giggled, pulling gently at his hair. “Hey, making out is one thing, but—”

He wrenched his face from my body with a teasing grin. Two dimples. “You smell like ham, and I don’t know about you, but two hot dogs aren’t cuttin’ it for me tonight.”

And with that, he pulled himself from my grasp, and jumped off the couch to take two running steps into the kitchen, humming all the way.

Patrickinney.

Teasing Irish bastard.